Reused Acrylic, Reworked Design: REFLO x schuh 

At schuh, improving our sustainability is one of our key objectives and is something that’s very important to us. We’re proud to have reduced our emissions by 70% since 2019, and we’re not stopping there! We’re continually looking for ways to conserve energy, reduce and recycle waste, and source goods and services that are better for the environment – and our latest project is all about repurposing our old store equipment.

Reworking Acrylic: schuh x Floreeda 

schuh is now working with Floreeda, a plastic fabrication company who are able to break down our unused acrylic from old store display equipment and make it into something new. 

The Floreeda team visited schuh Manchester Trafford Centre during their recent refit to collect over 190kg of unused acrylic equipment to test at their workshop. Our team visited the workshop to meet Paul and Jaqui, Floreeda’s founders, to discuss the partnership and see samples of the material. 

With the acrylics collected, we could create 450 new shoe risers – the platforms we use to elevate shoes on display. Thanks to the bright colouring of the materials, they were chosen to be used for kids’ shoe displays in schuh stores! 

The Acrylic Recycling Process

This process started with the old risers being placed inside the granulator to create 4mm granules, before a small amount of coloured granules were measured and mixed in with clear granules to enhance the colour for the ‘Back to School’ theme for the project.

The granules were then placed in the recycling cassette which was heated, pressed, and cooled to reveal the new sheet material. After laser cutting the sheets to size and gluing the panels together, the schuh x REFLO logo was UV printed on them.

schuh’s Carbon Offset

The new risers created through this process can be returned and recycled once again in the future – a fully circular economy!

By collecting and recycling waste acrylic instead of replacing it with virgin material, schuh will reduce our carbon emission even further. With our 190kg of risers taken from Trafford Centre, we have saved 1064kg C02e.

Our fantastic new risers created with Floreeda are soon to launch in stores across the UK and Ireland, including Birmingham Bullring, London Oxford Circus, Dublin Dundrum, Leicester Fosse Park, and Edinburgh St James – check them out next time you’re in store!